


looking for the dreamers

by whatimages



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-28
Updated: 2009-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatimages/pseuds/whatimages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Thursday night, and Jim really fucking wants a drink and a lay." Chance meetings and common threads.</p><p>Originally posted to livejournal 06/2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	looking for the dreamers

**we're looking for the dreamers who can sing this fucking loud**

Thursday night, and Jim really fucking wants a drink and a lay. Nothing in particular has happened, and that's just it. It's been two months of nothing in particular and they won't let him do the Kobayashi Maru again for another three weeks, so he's just about climbing a wall. Bones notices--comments on it regularly, in fact. So when Jim suggests the bar on a Thursday night, Bones looks like he really wants to say no, but he grabs his coat anyway.

It's  _the bar_ , the student dive that had a name once, but the neon sign's been burnt out for years and all the people who knew what it was called in the wayback have been up in space for a long while. So it's just the bar, and you don't need to look for uniforms to know that everybody there is Starfleet. Even townies looking to fuck a cadet don't come here because they only serve one kind of beer and three of hard liquor. It's not a place you go to meet people, it's a place you go to pick up people you've already met in class or in the caf or wherever.

It's crowded, like always. It's pretty much guaranteed to be packed any day of the week, because students are predictable lushes. Jim should know. Bones hates the place, like he hates every place that involves people and Jim trying to pull. Which, come to think of it, comes down to basically everywhere. Also, this particular bar only serves shitty whiskey and Bones is oddly particular for someone veering so close to alcoholism.

Bones orders; Jim scopes.  _Teamwork_ , he thinks. When they get the drinks, Bones knocks back half his whiskey neat in one go. But it's not the whole thing at once, so Jim knows he's not that pissed.

"See anything you like?" Jim asks, gesturing around the crowded room. He does it just to get a rise out of Bones, which has kind of been his m.o. these days. More than usual, even. But the fact of the matter is that Bones takes his divorced alky doctor image way too seriously, and he could definitely get some if he put any effort into it at all.

So when Bones scans the room and says, very seriously, "Yeah, actually," Jim's brain sputters for a minute, because they've gone through this exchange a hundred times if they've done it once, and the answer is always 'No,' or an eyeroll, or a disparaging comment about Jim's proclivities. Not an actual honest-to-god prospect for the good doctor, and for a second Jim has no idea how he feels about that.

"Two things in fact. This drink," he says, downing the rest of it, "and the door." The world rights itself, and Jim mentally congratulates Bones for getting him for five whole seconds, and then privately wonders if his brain is going, because he was probably fourteen the last time he fell for something like that.

Bones sets his empty glass down rather too forcefully. "I should go," he says, in a tone that means  _I would like to be anywhere but here._

"Aw, c'mon Bones. We're having fun," says Jim, speaking more to the rear view of two retreating girls than to the man beside him.

"I have a xeno practical tomorrow. I'm not going to be up to my elbows in alien guts with a hangover."

"Oh come on, what could be better?" Jim wheedles, more out of habit than expectation.

Bones thinks about it for a second. "I don't know. Maybe doing my own brain surgery with a spoon. That might be more fun."

Jim notes the grossed-out glance a girl near them tosses their way. "You're the worst wingman ever," he says cheerfully.

"Well, I'll just leave you to it," says Bones, and pays for his drink. "And if you get your face split open, don't you come crying to me at four in the morning." What Bones actually means is,  _could Jim please try his best not to get the shit beat out of him because he would really like to sleep tonight_ ; the last time Jim took him at his word and actually went to medical to get his face stitched up, Bones haragued him for twelve kinds of an idiot and had to replace some of the sutures anyway.

Jim tosses him a lazy salute. "Night, Bones. Sweet dreams."

Bones waves him off crossly and makes his way to the door, moving against the incoming tide of people. Jim watches him go, not feeling any more regret than another drink will kill.

When the door slams shut on Bones' retreating figure, Jim's eyes slide a little to the left. There at the head of the crowded table tucked in the corner, is a girl. Jim notices her because while she doesn't quite look out of place, he sure as hell hasn't seen her around before. He would have remembered: she has an electricity to her presence; she sparks over there in that dark corner. Also, her tits are fantastic. She's dominating the poker table, which is unfortunate because his luck at poker is actually kind of wretched and she looks like the kind of person you'd have to come close to beating if you wanted a chance. So he sits at the bar in such a way that the next time she wants a beer she'll have to walk up next to him; in the meantime, he idly chats up a pretty redhead from his Interstellar Diplomacy class, because he has never been above keeping his options open.

His strategic placement is rewarded when, more than half an hour later, she rises from her seat and heads to the bar. Her movements aren't self-consciously slinky, unlike so many of the women who usually catch his eye. She is deliberate; her body suggests to the people in front of her that they get out of her way. In doing so, she sort of accidentally suggests a hell of a lot more. At least to him.

It occurs to him that what he is doing may qualify as staring.

It's likely that she notices, because she comes right up next to him and leans on the bar in just such a way, signaling to the bartender for another round.

"You come here often?" he asks, in his best semi-ironic pickup tones.

She raises an eyebrow. "You got anything better to start with?"

He makes a show of thinking about it for a moment. "Naw, since you were too fast for me on the drinks."

"You need to work on your reflexes then." she says, but her lips quirk up at the edges, which means he isn't shut down. Jim knows shut down from a hole in the ground, and that's not it.

"Jim," he says, and offers his hand, and his very best charming, don't-you-wanna-do-me smile.

She looks at his hand for a moment, as if perplexed by the gesture, then offers her own. Her grip is firm, almost threateningly so, and her hands are surprisingly calloused.

"Kara," she says, and leans past him and gathers up the drinks for her table. But when she does it she leans a little into his personal space and flicks her eyes over him in what is definitely a once-over. Then she summarily turns around and walks back to her table without a second glance.

This is going to be more fun than he's had in a while. Normally he doesn't really have to work--he picks the girls who make eyes at him first. But she--Kara--is difficult. She's interesting.

The view of her retreating ass is suddenly interrupted by cleavage. Green cleavage, in fact, and it's a move so ridiculously brazen it could only be one person.

"Hey Gaila," he says.

"Hey Jim," she says, and he knows her well enough to know that she's being casual, though in her voice it comes out as a husky purr.

"No other takers, Gaila, really? Back to the old standby?" He ostentatiously eyedrops her cleavage. She is an excellent fuck buddy, but he is hankering after novelty.

She rolls her eyes at him. "Actually, I was going to do you a favour."

"We're already into the part of the evening with sexual favours? How time flies."

"Sexual in the sense that I'm going to be saving you from a fuckup."

"Eh?"

Gaila nodded over at the corner, at the poker table. "Your new friend. Not the best idea you've ever had."

"Why do you say that? Scary boyfriend I don't know about?" Gaila pursed her lips and gave him the  _you are a dumbass_  look. "Wait, Gaila, you're not talking from experience, are you?"

She flicks her hair over her shoulder. "So what if I am? It's not very gentlemanly of you to inquire." He glances at Kara, and then back to Gaila. Okay, that thought is going to keep him warm on more than a few nights.

"Who's been slandering my reputation saying I'm a gentleman? And are you trying to imply that I don't have a chance? Because I have very feminine features, I'll have you know."

"You're very pretty Jim, but--"

"I'm not sure pretty is the right word, I do have a certain masculine ruggedness to me--"

Gaila rolls her eyes in frustration and claps a hand over his mouth. The temptation to lick her palm just to make her shriek is nearly overwhelming.

"I just thought you should know that she's a shining example of Flight track, combat division."

"Oh," says Jim from behind her hand, so it comes out as a muffled "hmn"

Oh. Flight track, combat division. Which means fighter pilot. The division's famous for being small, reclusive, and totally insane. Their prospects once they were out in the black weren't too good either. It was rumoured they recruited specifically out of the pool of abnormal psych evaluations.

"Well, this should be an interesting evening," says Jim as soon as Gaila drops her hand.

"Just don't say I didn't warn you."

Before he can reply with something suitably witty and ironic, she moves away, back across the bar toward her mark for the evening. Watching her sway toward him and put a hand lightly on his shoulder is akin to watching someone be hit by a train. Jim knows from experience.

But he has other, more diverting interests than watching Gaila pick up.

The poker game has broken up, but Kara still sits at the table, tucking her winnings into her pocket. There's a guy sitting next to her, and Jim wonders if he might have to change his plans. He's good looking--very good looking, actually, and Jim wonders briefly what they'd say to having a third. He shifts closer to Kara, and Jim recognizes him from Advanced Tactical last semester. Kind of stuck up, his dad was an admiral, Jim remembers. Kara is leaning into him with this look that reads as predatory and possessive even from across the room. Except the guy is clearly an idiot, because he rolls his eyes, punches her lightly on the arm and then gets up and makes for the door. Some look flashes across Kara's face that Jim is willing to put down to the flickering light, and she doesn't see him glance back at her as he leaves.

It occurs to Jim briefly that this could maybe possibly be something he doesn't want to get involved with, but then before he can think about it, there she is standing beside him with a look that informs him of where he's going to be spending the night.

"You didn't get the chance to buy me a drink earlier," and she does this thing with her lips that is sort of smile except for how it goes right to Jim's cock.

"I think you'll find my reflexes much improved," he says, and hands her a bright green shot.

She doesn't say anything, just smiles like that again, takes the drink and knocks it back. It's not an ostentatious movement, but it exposes the curve of her throat very briefly.

When she sets the glass down on the table there's a glint in her eyes which dares him not to want her, and he has the distinct impression that the end to this evening is not something about which he has any particular choice. The thought is kind of thrilling.

Later, when she leans close to him and suggests, breath hot on his ear, that they get out of there, he just nods once. She scans the room quickly, almost like she's looking for someone or something; anyone else wouldn't have noticed, but Jim does. Then she does that smile thing again, and tugs on his hand. The door swings shut behind him, but he doesn't look back because the rest of the night stretches out in front of him in the rapidly closing distance between his hands and her skin.

*

He can't speak. There are words floating around in the back of his brain, but making them come out is more effort than he is capable of.

His body feels heavy and boneless; the bed, the room, could go on forever and he'll just drift along in the sea of tangled sheets until he hits the horizon.

She says: "Fuck."

He nods faintly in agreement. Then there's a moment where he really wants to say her name, except he can't make words and it makes him seem like a dick who's forgotten her name already, which is really unfair because actually he remembers it. It's Kara.

Her dog tags gleam on the bedside in the diffuse light from the lamp, and the realization hits abruptly that he's lying in bed with someone he may one day watch explode; that in some ways it's expected. He wonders what would possess someone to sign their own death warrant like that, and then it occurs to him that maybe he already knows. He veers away from the thought, but it's enough to shake him, ever so slightly, out of his post-coital complacency.

She lights up a cigarette, and the part of him that spends too much time with Bones says that's not allowed in res rooms and is also probably a fire hazard, smoking in bed like that. But she looks good like this, naked and content, leaning back against a pillow. It seems odd, next to that image in his head of her exposed throat, her purposeful swagger. She seems more vulnerable in this moment than when she was pinned under him, mouth bruised with his kisses.

She passes him the cigarette.

They do this for a while, passing the cig back and forth in this intimate quiet that shouldn't be weird, all this considered, but is nonetheless. Jim is an expert at talking himself into bed and then out of it again with no hard feelings, but the smoky earnestness of the silence resists any of his attempts at banter; they die before they even get to his lips.

She finishes the cigarette and drops it into the half inch of water in the glass on the bedside. Her eyes, he notices, are brown with little green flecks in them (the traitorous voice in the back of his head says,  _like Bones_ ). It seems weird he should only notice this now, but her eyes were mostly closed earlier. She'd opened them, once, when she was on top of him, her body quiveringly close to breaking. Her eyes flew open then and she'd looked clean through him. At what, he didn't know, perhaps didn't care to know, but he remembers her eyes then and will remember them for a good while.

She's looking at him now, staring like he was earlier. On impulse, on some stupid impulse, he leans over and kisses her again, gently. It's neither a demand nor a promise, because the fact of the matter is he is totally done for the night. He just wants to kiss her, to feel that she is here and knows who he is however cursory that knowledge may be. And it seems like she wants it to, because she kisses him back long and languorously, no more or less insistent than he is.

When they break apart, her lips curve into this sad half-smile, and it takes him a second to realize that he is mirroring her.

He glances toward the door, and she nods ever so slightly.

So he gets up and dresses, and she throws an old t-shirt on and walks him to the door.

She kisses him just once, closed mouth and chaste, and says "Thanks." It's weird but it's okay, and he smiles--really smiles--and nods, and then he's out the door.

A thought, a feeling clings to him as he makes his way down the stairs and out into the damp night. The fog is coming down. That's the best measure of time on nights like these: how the Bay fog diffuses the streetlights, how unearthly everything looks.

It's not until he's almost home, with the damp light curling around his neck, that he realizes that what has dogged him since he slipped out her door is the feeling that maybe, possibly, she gets it.

  
 _-fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at livejournal 06/28/2009. Betaed by the ever-wonderful liminalliz


End file.
